Thursday, January 19, 2012

Insurance Update - Rock Dam

I can tell you I'm getting real tired of having to report this kind of information.

On Tuesday we found insurance and they assured us things would be OK. We requested the insurance binder be delivered to us on Thursday morning. On Thursday morning they told us they would not be writing the insurance for our event at Rock Dam. As of this moment we do not have insurance available for the Sunday Jan 22 event.

Having been down this road before we have some back-up plans. We had one additional company available that we have been told will give us an answer on Friday morning by 10am. If that falls through we also should be able to get coverage from the same insurer (Rider Network) that we used when we had coverage problems several years ago, however that will come with several disadvantages:

Cost will be nearly 4 times more than we were paying.
No 3 wheelers (not a big issue)
Several more restrictive rules we must follow in how we run our event - mostly in the areas of separation between the track and pits/spectators. There may be more - I haven't seen the details of that coverage yet.

Ice is NOT an issue - there is plenty at Rock Dam.

NEXT week we are covered by the USSA insurance so that's a go no matter what - as is the Weyauwega event.

Now, for a "worst-case" scenario: No insurance no matter what. The promoters at Amherst have graciously offered their facility to us. However the track will have to be re-iced/re-flooded to be in race shape and that has to be done correctly for it to be worth the effort - but it is an option for the weeks AFTER Wausau. We can get insurance from almost anybody for a "dry land" event so that is not an issue. There is also the possibility of more than one visit to Weyauwega, so we could get more than just a couple of events in on the year.

You may be asking right now "what about all the races that still ran last week?" Good question, so I asked it of several people. Every event that I was able to talk to a promoter about admitted that they simply ran without insurance. Despite what you may have heard, being on a lake - whether you collect money/sign waivers or not - DOES NOT protect ANYONE from liability. If anything bad happens the CWIRA and it's officers, board, race officials and workers could be faced with liability without the protection of insurance. So no, that is not an option.

Where all this leaves us is right now we are waiting on either the latest insurance carrier we talked to or the Rider Network coverage to keep this weeks Rock Dam event on schedule. We can survive the $$$ thing with Rider Network for this week so at this point we'll "take what we can get" to make the event happen.

I will update this info after we hit the 10am mark Friday. I will be at work 8:30 to 8pm Friday at 715-623-4144 so if anybody needs to talk/vent - otherwise the raceday hotline will be updated as needed 715-212-6340.